Russia enacts new migration law to attract foreign workers

Russia has
adopted a set of amendments to its migration law aiming mainly to simplify
entry to and residence in Russia for highly skilled foreign workers. The
Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) and the Economic
Development Ministry spearheaded the move.

RSPP Vice
President Alexander Murychev said that the demand for high-profile foreign
specialists has risen substantially in the past few years in Russia. But the
current migration law, regarded as Byzintine, has intimidated businesses with
its quotas, short-stay visas, enormous taxes and deductions, keeping these
high-powered specialists at home, or at least away from Russia.

So what has
changed with the new law? For specialists, the visa process will be simpler. As
of last spring, foreign specialists are now eligible for three-year work visas
with a possibility of extension on one condition: an employment contract with a
Russian company ensuring a salary of at least 2 million rubles a year. Such a
visa will also allow them to bring their families along. If the income under the
contract is below 2 million rubles, the visa will only be valid for one year.

The
deadline for migrant registration has also been pushed back. Highly qualified
specialists are now granted a grace period of 90 days to choose their place of
registration, which incidentally can be a company office as well as a residence
building.

The Federal
Migration Service hopes that the amendments will encourage more foreign
executives to come to Russia. The government watchdog currently estimates their
total number at a modest 5,000. Meanwhile, amendments to the law alone are
unlikely to boost these numbers, former deputy head of the Federal Migration
Service Vyacheslav Postavnin asserts. While the law itself is reasonably good,
the main issue is how it will be enforced. Migration law enforcement practices are
uneven, and the ensuing red tape can render the amendments inefficient, if not
altogether useless.

The
president of the Russian recruitment agency HeadHunter attests that the demand
for foreign managers in Russia is still at a nascent stage. President Yuri
Virovets says that foreign specialists currently working in Russia are the
chief officers of Russia-based branches of foreign companies. He believes that
Russian companies will not be ready to bring on migrants for another year or
so.

There is a
different view, however, at the Skolkovo Foundation, Russia's emerging
innovation center. Skolkovo is set to collaborate with foreign corporations,
which are known to trust only their own executives, as well as their own
marketing experts and researchers.

No one has
so far offered any assessment of the impact of the migration-law amendments,
but experts tend to agree that the number of highly qualified foreign specialists
in Russia will increase in the coming years.